Christine Negroni riffs on aviation and travel and whatever else inspires her to put words to page.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Story of TWA 800 Reconstruction Dispute Undermines Conspiracy Theory

In the beginning of the new documentary about
the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, amateur investigator Thomas Stalcup stands in
front of a huge reconstruction of a section of the Boeing 747. The patchwork of
torn aluminum airplane skin is tacked onto a frame that extends 90 feet.
Stalcup looks on quietly for a moment before beginning to explain why he thinks
missiles brought down the airliner. In Stalcup’s version of events, government
investigators collaborated to hide the true story of Flight 800.

Stalcup has chosen the
most recognizable image of the air disaster to launch his 90 minute
documentary, but that stunning 747, put together from pieces recovered
from the Atlantic, is also a symbol of
government dysfunction. The story behind the reconstructed wreckage
is one of warring bureaucracies, competing agencies and appeals to the White
House. If anything, the mockup argues against the kind of widespread
cooperation required for a successful conspiracy.

I covered the crash as a correspondent for
CNN, and later wrote a book about it that included many of the alternative
scenarios about what caused the disaster, including Stalcup’s missile
theory. I also wrote about the tortured relationship between law
enforcement and accident investigators.

The bad blood between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the NTSB started practically the moment they arrived on Long
Island. It is easy to understand why. Acting on the possibility it was a terror
attack, the FBI seized control of all aspects of the investigation and enacted
rules that conflicted with the NTSB’s far more open procedures.

The FBI’s Jim
Kallstrom went on television talking about finding the perpetrators which
infuriated the NTSB. Working unhappily together in a hot, smelly, cavernous
hangar, cliques formed and splintered. Resentment and second guessing colored
every decision.

Then-cabinet secretary Kitty Higgins sometimes
intervened, pleading for reason. “My job was to hose people down and say, ‘Back
to your corners’” she told me.

Taking a page from the investigation into the
1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, Kallstrom decided in November to reconstruct the
airplane. The NTSB balked. The said there was no need. They were certain the
problem was mechanical. And back to the White House they’d all go.

“How could I ever answer the question,
“What happened?’” Kallstrom pointed out when they were assembled in the meeting
with the White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. “We know what happened” was
the reply of the NTSB’s Bernie Loeb. He thought the idea was a publicity stunt;
a waste of time, effort and money. “The FBI was clueless,” Loeb told me. “They
never have been involved in plane crashes. They act viscerally on what they
see.”

Panetta sided with Kallstrom and ordered the
rebuilding of the plane. By February 1997 it was done at a cost of
$500,000. Then the families of the crash victims were invited to
visit the reconstructed cabin and to see the seats where their loved ones had
died.

That may have been the moment when the NTSB
began to see the value of rebuilding the airplane. Today it is the centerpiece
of its Safety Center in Virginia, which is where Stalcup went to film his
documentary, scheduled to air on Epix on July 17 the 17th anniversary
of the crash.

I can’t say whether they will be successful in
changing the opinions of those who give the missile theory credence. But having
talked to so many of the people who lived through the investigation, I know it
would have been impossible for those sparring government workers to agree to
much of anything, let alone concoct an elaborate fiction to cover up a missile
downing a commercial jetliner.

For all the squabbling though the NTSB did pick up a few tricks from the FBI. It learned not to sit back and do nothing
when its credibility is challenged, and it now embraces the headline-generating
power of the crash reconstruction it once fought so hard not to build.